Carving bigger necks

I did get to spend some time in the shop this weekend, and I had company. For the two experimental builds it is time for the necks. The neck blanks we chose are of alder and I put a couple of carbon fibre rods in each. The rods are 12.5 mm or so, and the grooves I made on the mini table saw were just under 10. So my no. 4 plane which is set up as a scrub plane took them down. Nasty stuff, carbon fibre. 

Then I thicknessed the headstock by sawing down with my wee rip saw. I tried making a groove with a rasp first, to enable me planing it down with some plane, but reached for the saw. The plane just wanted to break off the edges of the headstock. 



And you’ve seen this before I think. The small plane that once was a spokeshave. It isn’t much use for anything else than this but it does this really well. 



Then Johan learned to carve a neck with spokeshaves and knives. He was really impressed by it taking so little time, and I was happy for the company and that my methods suited him. 



But that poor plane from the first pic... don’t worry, the whetstones are soaking and the iron will soon be better. In fact I have a bunch of tools in need of sharpening. Tomorrow, I hope.